EA is officially discontinuing the use of online passes in their games, which were one-time use codes that allowed players to access the online portion of the games they were attached to. They claim they're doing this because gamers didn't like it. Go figure.

EA has been the cause of a lot distress for gamers for a while now with the various measures they’ve implemented in order to encourage the purchasing of new games. One of those measures was an online pass, which is a one-time use code that gives you access to the online features of whatever game you’re playing. If you were to buy the game used, you would have to pay a fee in order to attain a new code and have access to online features.

Today we have some good news: EA is officially discontinuing this practice. They cite the reason for doing so as fan dissatisfaction. An email was sent out to various websites confirming this news and explaining the decision. The troubling part is they claim that the reason they implemented it to begin with was because they “thought it was a cool way to package up online services and content," which doesn’t really make sense. I don’t think there exists a consumer in the world who would want to pay extra to access online.

They continue to state that consumers shouldn’t expect to see online passes again. It’s a shame this didn’t happen sooner, because the practice has already been implemented by other companies. The best we can hope for is the others follow suit, so we can officially rid ourselves of one of gaming’s demons. Still, this is a good start.